OpenWrt

This tutorial will show you how to configure a privacy Vpn using OpenVPN on OpenWrt through the LuCI web interface (no command line required!). Lots of screenshots are included so that you can follow along. What is OpenWrt OpenWrt is a popular Linux distribution for routers and other low power devices. It makes a perfect host for a VPN gateway. What is a Privacy VPN/ What is OpenVPN? A VPN (Virtual Private Network) provides an encrypted connection between two networks over the internet. Traditionally this was used for … Read more

This tutorial will document steps you need to take to add USB storage to your OpenWrt router. These steps are tested on OpenWrt 21.02 in 2022. These steps were tested on a BT HomeHub 5 which was modified to run OpenWrt. These devices come with 128MB of storage – enough for OpenWrt and software, but not really enough for hosting file shares. Picking a USB Storage Device Most routers running OpenWrt will not be able to supply enough power to spin a mechanical hard disk. Avoid portable hard … Read more

This tutorial will walk you through setting up DNS level Ad Blocking on your network by installing Adblock on an OpenWrt router. If you’re looking to set up an OpenWrt router of your own, check out our guide to setting up OpenWrt on a repurposed BT HomeHub. What is OpenWrt? OpenWrt is a Linux-based operating system designed to be run on routers and other embedded devices. It’s a full computer OS so you can do whatever you want with it, but its primary use (and … Read more

This super quick tutorial will show you how to set up a Samba/SMB Windows network share on an OpenWrt device. This tutorial works best if you have some extra storage available for your file share – check out our article on adding extra USB storage to OpenWrt here. What is Samba? Samba is a file sharing package which provides network file shares compatible with the SMB and CIFs protocols used by Windows. Install Dependencies/Packages You will need to install two packages to set up the network … Read more

This article will show you how to configure a basic network with WiFi Bridging, DHCP on a fresh install of OpenWrt – with explanations and screenshots. This guide follows on from LinuxScrew’s guide to setting up OpenWrt on a BT HomeHub 5 – but you can follow along on any device (including a Raspberry Pi!). This article assumes you have an OpenWrt device you wish to start using. We’ll start by connecting it to your home WiFi network to get it online and then setting it … Read more

This article will show you a quick and clean way of getting secure DNS over TLS running on OpenWRT – without resorting to the command line. If follows on from our other OpenWrt Articles. We’ll be using stubby – a local DNS resolver that will encrypt local DNS queries and forward them to an external secure DNS resolver Provided by Cloudflare. Why Cloudflare? Because it’s the default secure DNS resolver in the default stubby configuration, that means we don’t have to edit the config files, and Cloudflare’s servers … Read more

This article will show you how to keep your devices separate on your OpenWRT managed network and follows the steps taken to set up a basic WiFi network covered here. Why would you want to keep your devices from talking to each other on a local network? I repair other people’s computers – other people who may not be too careful about what websites they visit. If I need to connect one of these computers to my home network, I want to make sure that they … Read more